In the next two years it is expected that the current volume of medical coders will be almost doubled as earlier the international coding standards had about 15,000 codes under ICD-9 and ICD-10 has got about 65,000 diagnoses.Shahid Akhter | ETHealthWorld | Updated: January 23, 2016, 10:56 IST

1. What is the scope of Medical Coding in India? Post the implementation of ICD-10, has the opportunity for medical coders in India increased?

Medical coding in India is growing as a profession. Of late we have seen the additional specialty of medical coding domain also increasing. The expected growth of medical coders is anywhere between 15-20% in the near future.

In the next two years it is expected that the current volume of medical coders will be almost doubled as earlier the international coding standards had about 15,000 codes under ICD-9 and ICD-10 has got about 65,000 diagnoses. The expected learning curve for our current number of medical coders is likely to be anywhere between 3 to 6 months.

We focus on the provider set of US healthcare helping the US healthcare in terms of medical billing, revenue cycle management, medical coding and also accounts receivable management.

2. ICD-10 was implemented this October. What has been the impact of this change at Omega Healthcare in terms of business development, technological changes, HR strategies, training the existing employees, etc.?

We launched ICD-10 on October 2012. We are one of the few organisations who have successfully implemented ICD-10 very smoothly. Our clients are very happy from day one of implementation, the preparedness for the training started from about February of this year.

Today we are about 3200 coders. This was a marathon exercise in which they were supposed to go through 60 hours of trainings and 65 hours of on job training. In addition to their day to day production these people also have to get ready for their ICD-10. We have incentivised the entire medical coders who have gone through ICD-10 to ensure that it motivates them to go an extra mile to learn. This plan helped us to not only increase the learning curve but also helped them to be retained in the organisation.

3. What is Omega Medical Coding Academy (OMCA)? How many batches have been trained since its inception and absorbed within the company?

The requirement for medical coders in India is likely to double in the coming years but the available talent is very limited. On August 2014, we launched an academy where we started creating more and more medical coders.

We went through three approaches; we hire some seeing our requirements and also sell our ready made medical coders to our competitors. This way we thought of creating more supply to the market that will help in complimenting each other rather than competing with each other.

Till now we have trained about 870 medical coders, out of which 550 were absorbed by us. If we are hiring them, we will repay the tuition fee after their 12 month completion with us. So we are training them, giving them employment, if we don’t have requirement we will provide placements and also request our competitors to refund whatever course fee they had paid.

We started the medical coding academy at Chennai last year, then we moved to Trichy and our next plan is Bangalore. Our intention is to start this medical coding academy across India so that we can train people who wish to learn medical coding and create an employment opportunity for them.

4. How the Indian BPOs are providing exciting career opportunities for the life science and paramedical students?

There are about 3 large segments which creates employment in Indian BPO. One is the provider side of healthcare where we hire life science background and paramedics to do the medical coding. Then there is a payer side of healthcare which is also getting outsourced to India. In this whatever job is done somebody has to inspect whether the right things are being done and if the payment can be released. Third area where life science graduates and the paramedics get an opportunity are in the clinical research. A lot of countries are looking at India as a destination to help their clinical research happenings back in this country.

5. Poised with growth, what are the new challenges that Indian Healthcare BPO sector faces in hiring arena? Do you think Tier II & III Cities is emerging as a vibrant business eco-system for healthcare BPO Industry?

In the hiring areas the largest challenge Indian healthcare BPO’s are facing is the talent availability. We have a lot of talent available but making them realize that this is an alternative career is one of the challenges that BPO Company faces. We also see that Tier II & III cities produce maximum life science graduates whereas science graduates have come down in the cities and majority of them are moving towards the professional courses.

Motivating them to make them migrate to the cities and start a career is also a challenge. What the BPO companies are doing now is identifying the hub where largest student base is available and trying to set up a facility there.

Another thing is while we try to attract the right talent, what are the one or two things as an organisation that we do to retain them or show them the larger picture is the next challenge that the BPO companies are facing.

6. What are the new HR strategies you are planning at Omega Healthcare? Any training programs or out of the box initiatives for employees.

We recently launched a programme called Parivartan. In this programmes all our employees and their immediate family members are included in an initiative where they can reach out through a toll free number for any kind of assistance. We have also launched 4 training programmes in the last 4 months looking at the growth and how we create the career. We have tied up with AAPC which is the largest certifying body in America. 100% of our medical coders will be certified in the next 2 years.

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